Caption

Radium therapy. Man with neck cancer receiving radiotherapy treatment from a Flint radium "bomb", designed in 1934 for four hospitals in London, England. This bomb produced radiation from four radium sources placed close to the patient's skin. Each source focused on the cancer from a different angle, so that this was the only tissue that received radiation from all four. At left, the doctor can be seen adjusting the bomb. In radiotherapy, ionising radiation is targeted on cancerous tissue, destroying the cells or stopping further development of the cancer. Radium was discovered by the French scientists Marie and Pierre Curie in 1898.